Wednesday, August 29, 2012

(This is a semi-continuation of Post Play Analysis: Pocket Planes, so please take a look at that if you haven't done so.)
While I still play Pocket Planes on a daily (hourly) basis, the game isn't without faults. It was also apparent to many people I knew who played Tiny Towers religiously but quickly backed off away from Pocket Planes. I'll list a few in mind, and perhaps suggest something that would have remedied the problem.

Player Choice Paralysis
While the amount of player choice in Pocket Planes is commendable, it leads to player paralysis: players are given so many choices (all seemingly different, but in non-obvious ways), they end up feeling lost and not sure what to try. What plane parts should they buy? As long as they're available, they can be bought; Yet how should they know if that's what they wanted? (Hint: They don't get to know). What's the ideal next city to expand to? The game doesn't prevent you as long as you have the cash, but with so many choices, players who don't have a goal in mind will just be sitting there debating all the outcomes and never arrive at anything meaningful.

An even more deadly situation arises when players make bad decisions: Bought a city too far that none of your fleet can reach (and there's no way of visually seeing that info unless you are trying to fly a plane), then you're forced to either live with it or sell the city back for half it's cost; Bought the wrong plane parts? Good luck waiting for the next one to randomly generate. Every mistake a player makes (and the more costly these mistakes they get), the more likely the player will avoid decisions because of it's large negative consequences.

It's interesting to note that this issue is an side effect of the open player choice design decision: attempts to fix this will equally hurt players who enjoy the freedom and choice that the game offers. (more on this at the end of this post)Lack of Actual Progression
In Tiny Towers, players are visually reminded of how much they've achieved with every new floor they build. This visual cue of player impact on the world is unmistakable, and it works in reminding the players what they're trying to achieve and what they've already done.

And the above screen is a great shot of "progression" in Pocket Planes: none. Since cities can be shutdown (and highly encouraged, see below), the only constant growth players will see is in their in game bank account, fleet size, and increased choices. Some players may find the "bigger number" appealing enough, but for most, this lack of visual feedback impact will severely dampen the experience.

Ideally, the game should have artificially locked away stuff that wouldn't have affected actual gameplay: Why show all available planes to the player at the start of the game when they cannot afford them (instead, show "secret planes", only to be revealed when they get them). Personally, I would have gone further and restricted certain cities to be only available after certain level cap; however, this would be counterproductive to the actual "open choice" design.

Deeper Management ... for Who?
Another feature that Pocket Planes offered above Tiny Towers was it's deeper management. Players have numerous ways to approach the game to suit how they want to play: Want to operate a large fleet within a very small area, flying passengers to any adjacent cities? Sure! Rely exclusively on layovers, flying passengers to major hubs to gather bonus? Why not! Ground all planes until they're full? Definitely.

However, does everyone want this choice?

Casual players coming from Tiny Towers who enjoyed it's simplicity and (extremely) light management may find these choices and micromanagement frustrating. Customizing when and how to load a plane for maximum profit may be appealing for some, but the micromanagement (and the numerous button clicks required just to fly a plane) will annoy casual players, driving them away.

NimbleBit had somewhat actually addressed this issue with the "quick load/unload passenger/cargo" button, but I would go even one step further: automatic destination setting - A flight should have a way to automatically fly to a destination based on the majority of it's jobs onboard. Such a feature removes the somewhat cumbersome step of map manipulation.

(Additional aside: Tiny Towers thrived on the fact that the game can be played single handed: flicking to the right floor, stocking and choices can all be done by one finger; Pocket Planes, by it's horizontal layout and 2D map will require more player interaction by default. As casual games that are meant as small toy distractions, Tiny Tower has a much lower "attention requirement", which makes it much easier for player to stick to and come back and play).Counter-intuative solutions
What's interesting in Pocket Planes is while the game laws is consistent within the real world, it's counter-intuitive to what players would expect within a game context. Specifically, there are two major issues:

In contrast to Tycoon games, players systematically do worst as they increase the number of airports opened.

Upon seeing the game, most players will naturally gravitated to the goal of get as many airports as possible. It's interesting to note that the game populates jobs in each city based on city size, not number of cities available (limits the scrolling in the job screen), which leads to the side effect of making it hard for players to maintain a profit without long waits. Players who choose to keep lots of cities will eventually find themselves with many planes and not enough jobs to fly to a destination. Personally, I've flirted with 20+ cities, but have eventually settled down closer to 8~9 as the "right" amount.

(Sidenote: The best way to min-max stats here is to cover the world with a Min-Span Tree, which encourages players to cover greatest distances with the least amount of cities possible, so that you can take a passenger from one side of the world to the other with the least amount of stops possible)

The end-game planes (such as the Cloudliner, pictured above) being less profitable was also baffling: players usually expect items locked away as superior items, but Pocket Planes holds the opposite to be true: in all classes, the plane that is easiest/cheapest/most profitable to operate (Kangaroo, Aeroeagle, Sequoia) were unlocked relatively early. This is a baffling choice because when players experiment (by spending and betting on the new planes) and fail/lose money, they begin second guessing their decisions, and make less interesting choices within the game.

The challenge of upstreaming users, at what cost?
I think Pocket Planes is actually an interesting case study on follow-up games to successful IPs (other notable ones includes Angry Birds -> Angry Bird Space and Flight Control -> Flight Control Rocket). When a casual game becomes a runaway hit, how should developers handle a sequel? Is more of the same good enough? How different can the game be without alienating the original fans? More importantly, as casual games, is it wrong to expect that these players will upstream into more core experiences?

Monday, August 27, 2012

When NimbleBit released Tiny Towers last year, people took notice: a game that is Free to Play, doesn't lock away content behind a pay wall, and doesn't aggressively push players with destructive ads and ludicrous leveling system. After surpassing 10 million downloads and winning Apple's Game of the year 2011, everyone was looking forward to what's next for NimbleBit. Well, Pocket Planes doesn't disappoint, sort of...

The basic 'gameplay' for Pocket Planes is pretty simple to explain: As an airline operator, players must purchase planes to fly, cities to operate out of (presumably, fees to operate in that city), and load planes with passengers/cargos and set destination to fly towards. Each completed job earns players cash which allows players to further expand.

Note 1: As you can judge from the heading, this is a multi-part series. Pocket Planes does a lot of very interesting things that still has me hooked even months after release, but it's also done a lot of polarizing things that have pushed fans away. Instead of having a single post mixing in both sides, I'll split it into two and hopefully make it digestible... You may not agree with me holistically on whether this game is good or not, but I'll try to address each individual component within the game.Note 2: A lot of the analysis and comparison will be done against Tiny Towers, which I think is a fair comparison on how to design an F2P game, especially coming from the same developer. It would be a good analysis to see what they felt needed fixing, and the approaches they went in addressing the shortcomings of Tiny Towers.

Player Choice
One of the most obvious changes Pocket Planes adds in contrast to Tiny Towers is the amount of player choice it offers to the players. In contrast to the linear structure of Tiny Towers (obvious with the level layouts), you're given choices everywhere in the game: cities to buy, planes to buy, flight location, who/what to load onto planes, when to expand, how to expand, etc... More importantly, this open ended structure lets player choose the most important part of the game: their own intermediate and end-game goals.

Consider Tiny Tower's intermediate end-game goals: See the next random floor (yes, I'm aware that 2.0 changes that) and Build all the floors - Fairly modest and straightforward, but requires players to buy in to such goals. Pocket Planes deviates from this as there is no such structure: Players can start anywhere, and can buy anything as long as they have the cash for it. Hence, the game encourages players to come up with their own goals, whether it be operating a giant airline that operates in as many area as possible, or have a highly optimized airline, or even collect all the available aircraft in game.

Deeper Management
Along with increased player choice comes a deeper management system, where players now have actual choices that have meaningful consequences in all levels of the game. Here's a quick rundown of some of the choices in the different levels of the game.

Buying things:

To reach far away cities, what's the best city to purchase that minimizes distance

A larger plane cost more to operate, but can yield better results if carrying the right passengers

Choosing to funnel jobs to layover locations to organize destinations

etc...

The actual management is surprisingly deep, and would keep min/max-ers (like myself) busy for days looking up the statistics of how to best operate most efficiently, balancing growth and profitability. In contrast to Tiny Tower's "placing people in the right floors", Pocket Planes looks and feels like a deep statistical simulation, which may be a great thing for players on iOS who're looking for a deeper experience.

Global Challenge

The surprisingly new feature in Pocket Planes has to be the Global Challenge, which creates an asynchronous multiplayer experience within a single player game. Players register themselves into "clan"-like groups, and compete for job deliveries with the global community for prizes within the game.

This feature was a great way to create short term goals for people to aspire to, and allow the developers to use their current player base as viral marketers, piggybacking off gaming communities to talk about the game and drag more people into the game and "help the cause".

...that's all for now. Stay tune to the second part analysis of Pocket Planes, where I pick apart the numerous reasons why this game doesn't have the "stickiness" that Tiny Towers did.